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The 5% Club Launches

A group of the UK’s leading companies have today launched a major campaign calling on industry to adopt a new 5% target for graduates, apprentices and sponsored students in their organisations.

The 5% Club is calling for all public and private companies in the UK to join them in ‘investing in a generation’.

Spearheaded by defence and security company QinetiQ, other companies and organisations that have signed-up as founding members include Babcock International, the UK arm of giant EADS, Atkins, MBDA and Renishaw. The campaign is also endorsed by the CBI and the department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

The aim of the 5% Club is to address the twin issues of youth unemployment, currently standing at nearly one million, and poor apprenticeship figures. Only one in ten young people join an apprentice scheme when they leave school, a figure that The 5% Club will aim to solve by providing more youth training opportunities.

By becoming a member of The 5% Club, companies will publicly report progress on the 5% target in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) section of their Annual Report and Accounts or equivalent- the first time such a target will be measured.

The 5% Club charter pledges members to:

Play a part in addressing youth employment and skills shortage issues

Pledge to work toward having a minimum 5% of their UK workforce enrolled on formalised apprentice, sponsored student and/or graduate development schemes within five years

Report publicly every year on the above as a CSR metric in its Annual Report and Accounts or equivalent

Be an ambassador of The 5% Club and encourage other businesses to participate in the campaign.

All current members are urging more public and private companies to follow suit and aim to update on progress using various platforms, including social media, as the campaign progresses.

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Were Delighted to support a great initiative by the 5PercentClubUK and local employer QinetiQ to hire and train 5% apprentices and graduates yearly. Currently Dale Power Solutions operates at 6.2% hiring lots of apprentices and graduates. We passionately believe in the power of apprenticeships, which was represented by being recognized as a Top 100 UK Apprenticeship Employer and National Apprenticeship Service. And this year our very own Natasha Pitts won an award for the regions higher apprentice of the year in the Yorkshire and Humber region and will find out later on this month if she is in the running for the top national prize. We have also signed up 7 representatives in the company to STEM, where we go to visit local schools to get them passionate about STEM subjects and apprenticeships and the exciting paths that these subjects can take you down and how rewarding an apprenticeship can be. We also sponsor Scarborough Engineering Week which looks at changing perceptions of the engineering industry with young people is at the heart of the event. Now in its fourth year, Scarborough Engineering Week is going from strength to strength, The event will run between the 14th and 16th October. Feedback that NYBEP received after the event in 2012 clearly shows how this has achieved its goal, with one person commenting “I feel that I have learned more about Science and engineering today than in any of my lessons”. And another stated “I thought engineering was dirty and underpaid before attending this event, now I know it’s a lot cleaner and there are well paid opportunities”.